Generally, a silver halide color photographic material comprises at least three layers, i.e., a blue-sensitive layer, a green-sensitive layer, and a red-sensitive layer, which respectively contain a yellow dye-forming coupler, a magenta dye-forming coupler, and a cyan dye-forming coupler.
As yellow couplers out of these couplers, acylacetanilide couplers or malondianilide couplers represented respectively by benzoylacetanilide couplers and pivaloylacetanilide couplers are, widely known. Although benzoylacetanilide couplers are generally high in coupling activity with an aromatic primary amine developing agent at the time of development and are high in the molecular extinction coefficient of the yellow dye produced therefrom, they are defective in that the color image fastness under dark storage is low. Although pivaloylacetanilide couplers are excellent in color image fastness, since the coupling reactivity at the time of development is low and the molecular extinction coefficient is small, a large amount of the color-forming coupler has to be used to obtain a satisfactory color image density, and therefore they are disadvantageous in view of image quality and cost.
Therefore, the development of yellow couplers having merits of both of them, that is, high color-forming properties (a high coupling activity of the coupler and a high molecular extinction coefficient of the dye formed therefrom) and color image fastness, is desired.
From the above point of view, the acyl group of acylacetamide series yellow couplers has been studied. For example, U.S. Pat. Re. No. 27,848 discloses couplers having, as a modification of a pivaloyl group, a 7,7-dimethylnorbornane-1-carbonyl group or a 1-methylcyclohexane-1-carbonyl group. However these couplers are low in coupling activity and small in the molecular extinction coefficient of the dye produced therefrom. Further, JP-A ("JP-A" means unexamined published Japanese patent application) No. 26133/1972 discloses couplers having a cyclopropane-1-carbonyl group or a cyclohexane-1-carbonyl group. However these couplers are not satisfactory because the fastness of the dye produced therefrom is low.
On the other hand, as malondianilide couplers, couplers described, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,149,886, 4,095,984, and 4,477,563 or British Patent No. 1,204,680 are known. However, these couplers are not free from a problem because the image fastness, in particular the heat-and-humidity fastness, is low.
Apart from attempts to improve the performance of couplers themselves as stated above, the development of a technique of improving color-forming properties or color image fastness is under way.
For example, it is known that when, to a first organic compound (base dye) having a maximum wavelength absorption peak (.lambda. max) at 590 nm or lower, a second organic compound (quenching dye) having a .lambda. max at 530 nm or higher is added, the light fastness of the base dye is improved, as described in JP-A No. 17228/1975. In examples in that publication, as base dyes, magenta dyes produced from 5-pyrazolone magenta couplers are mainly dealt with, and as yellow dyes only two dyes produced from benzoyl-type yellow couplers are mentioned.
Hereinafter a coupler that can produce a base dye is referred to as a base coupler, and a coupler that can produce a quenching dye is referred to as a quenching coupler.
When as a base coupler a benzoyl-type yellow coupler is chosen, the light fastness of the yellow dye formed after adding a quenching coupler followed by processing is improved fairly in comparison with the case wherein the quenching coupler is not added, but the fastness under dark storage remains inadequate and is unsatisfactory.
On the other hand, concerning photographic materials containing a yellow coupler and a coupler having a .lambda. max which is on the longer side of that of the yellow coupler, for example U.S. Pat. No. 4,806,459 and JP-A Nos. 293545/1988 and 145656/1989 are known. However, although these photographic materials are improved in color reproduction, the fastness is inadequate and is required to be improved.